Posts Tagged ‘NOS’

Skateboarding has long seemed impervious to the whims of inflation, with a deck and grip-tape in 1990 costing roughly the same as it does today, a conundrum that has confounded shop owners and time-travelers bent on achieving quick profits. Logic rules that over time a good either rises in price as ingredient or construction costs increase, or becomes cheaper due to advances in more efficient production techniques and more easily mined minerals. In skateboard decks’ instance, technologically advanced choppers derived from multi-blade Gillette razors have eased the felling of Canadian hard-rock maples, but the giant iron weights needed to press plies together and form decks have grown more dear due to increased demand from coastal New Jersey exercise parlours.

But fallout from the worldwide economic volcano could change all. Easy-money policies pursued by the Fed and other central banks have raised fears that nebulous and weird “bubbles” could be a-growing in certain segments of industry, risking catastrophe. So sayeth Esther George, Midwestern Fed banker:

“”Prices of assets such as bonds, agricultural land, and high-yield and leveraged loans are at historically high levels. A sharp correction in asset prices could be destabilizing,” she added.

On the internet, Ebay is an electronic marketplace where web users can buy bundled tongue depressors and floppy disks by the pound, or gently used pants. It is a digital bazaar where ‘buyer beware’ is the law of the land and strange economic aberrations can develop, challenging monetary norms and thought processes. So it is that skateboard stickers have undergone a mutant outgrowth in price, with the “buy it now” demand of $16.99 for one cassette-tape sized decal running a hefty 3,400% premium to the 50-cent rate prescribed by glass case curators nationwide in 1994.

Here, fond remembrances of the passing Bridgebolt fancy of the early 1990s costs $8.00 to relive in sticker form. This Powell sticker ostensibly from the 70s is the size of several dimes, comes with ‘authentic’ centering error and is $32 to buy immediately. Elsewhere, two American dollars sought for a couple SMA stickers possibly reflects the harshness of Europe’s sovereign debt problems. Other entities, such as Apple Computer and HURLEY.COM, also make skateboard stickers.